I plunged into practicing Nichiren Buddhism in the 1980s, knowing zero about its philosophy or history. I joined the American branch of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI) Nichiren Buddhist association, the SGI-USA.

I started passionately studying Buddhism. I had loads of personal challenges during this time, but my family and many SGI-USA members helped me pull through. Studying Buddhism made me want to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, and chanting spurred me to share Buddhism because chanting rocked. Little by little, I elevated my life.

Two years later, while chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and studying Nichiren’s writings, I read a passage, in The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin (WND), on page 230, from a treatise titled the “The Opening of the Eyes” describing the Ceremony in the Air scene from the Lotus Sutra, the ancient Buddhist teaching that forms the philosophical and theoretical basis of Nichiren Buddhism. The scene struck me like lightning. Unbelievably, I had dreamt about it fourteen years earlier when I was fourteen. I still had the fading sheets of notebook paper, dated April 22, 1976, on which I had recorded the dream upon awakening.
 
My dream: My sister, youngest brother, and I stood in a large empty lot. Then a great explosion occurred, knocking us to the ground. We arose from the gravel and were next to a white car. Many other people arose from the ground as well--one stood out, dressed in a white turban and long, flowing robe. In the eastern direction, a large, red brick building that looked like a school building to me, about six stories high, with several windows, arose in the air and remained suspended there. Behind it, to the left and right, a golden sun and a large golden maple leaf arose and hung in the air, just over the building. (Although the sun appeared in a cloudless sky, the scene was overcast, not "sunny". So perhaps what I saw was the full moon at night). On the sun/moon, images of famine, warfare and other sufferings displayed like film projections. A faceless voice said we who witnessed these occurrences had 2,500 years to create a better world.

Before reading Nichiren’s description of the Ceremony in the Air and discovering that it mirrored my dream, I already believed in the Buddhist concept of the eternity life, but afterwards, I knew life was eternal. What else explains how I dreamt about a 3,500 year-old scripture before I ever read or heard of it? This experience is one of many reasons why I continue to enjoy studying Nichiren's writings today.  

Lately I’ve been studying the Ceremony in the Air to gain a better understanding of the Gohonzon, the object--a scroll inscribed with lettering--that Nichiren Buddhists focus on while chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. I’d like to share what I’ve been learning.

Shakyamuni’s Teachings
The man commonly called Buddha (Awakened One) is also known as Shakyamuni (Sage of the Shakya Clan), Siddhartha Gautama, or “the” Buddha. He lived in India around the sixth or fifth century BCE and preached various teachings for forty years—from the age of thirty-two to seventy-two. Shakyamuni aimed to lead people to the same enlightenment to the ultimate Law, or absolute happiness, he had achieved. However, he identified certain people as being incapable of achieving Enlightenment, also called Buddhahood: women, evildoers, the learned and the partially enlightened.

Then, suddenly, forty years later, Shakyamuni espoused a radically different sermon than any he had ever preached. He declared the new teaching superior to all the teachings he previously preached, currently preached and would preach in the future, saying that all his other teachings presented only part of the truth and were taught to prepare the way for the complete teaching that he now revealed. After his death, this teaching, the Lotus Sutra, was transcribed into twenty-eight chapters. Shayamuni's statement regarding its superiority to all of his past, present or future teachings appears in its tenth chapter, "The Teacher of the Law." 

The Eternity of Life
In the Lotus Sutra’s sixteenth chapter, “Life Span of the Buddha,” part of which is included in the Nichiren Buddhist daily prayer ritual, Shakyamuni declared that, although it was commonly believed he became a Buddha at the age of thirty-two in his present lifetime, in truth his Buddha identity, his life, was eternal. By thus revealing his true identity as an eternal Buddha, Shakymuni, by extension, illustrated that everyone is an eternal Buddha. He stated that the true reason for his, or any Buddha=s, appearance among living beings is to awaken them all to this truth about themselves. 

Moreover, countless majestic people emerge from a great eruption in the earth to join the Ceremony in the Air. They say they are Shakyamuni's disciples from the incalculably remote past and vow to teach the Law of the Lotus Sutra to future generations beginning twenty-five hundred years in the future—when the world is marked by unparalleled turmoil—and continuing ten thousand years and more thereafter.

Nichiren's Interpretation of the Ceremony in the Air
Based on his study of the works of Buddhist teachers before him, particularly T’ien t’ai of China (538-597), the monk Nichiren (1222-1282), born in Japan, which was ridden with all manner of strife and suffering, roughly twenty-five hundred years after Shayamuni’s death, interpreted the fantastic scene in the Ceremony in the Air as a powerful metaphor for the Buddha identity, the Buddha nature, or the ultimate Law. Shakyamuni alluded to this Law, but never defined it. It was Nichiren who identified it as Nam-myoho-renge-kyo (literally, "I devote my life to the Wonderful Law of the Buddha's Lotus Flower Teaching"). 

Nichiren called Nam-myoho-renge-kyo the true entity of life--of every living being, every thing and every environment, that which is all. He stressed the importance of not viewing the Law as separate from or outside of oneself writing, "When you chant myoho and recite renge, you must summon up deep faith that (Nam) Myoho-renge-kyo is your life itself" (WND, p.3, "On Attaining Buddhahood in this Lifetime").

Here’s how Nichiren broke down the Ceremony in the Air:  

• The ceremony taking place in the air illustrates the eternal and all-encompassing quality of the Buddha nature, the universal Law, that it transcends the concepts of time and space.  
   

•  Shakyamuni's disciples from the remotest past's emergence from the earth symbolizes the Buddha nature eternally residing within the "earth," or the depths, of life itself. 
   

•  Shakyamuni’s disciples who emerged from the earth are called the Bodhisattvas of the Earth. Their vow to practice and teach the Lotus Sutra to future generations with the Buddha’s compassionate spirit represents the vow that Nichiren and his disciples make in the tumultuous era twenty-five hundred years after Shayamuni's passing.
    
  

• The suspended Treasure Tower, adorned with countless precious jewels, in which Shakyamuni sat while preaching, represents the precious state of Buddhahood, the universal Law within, connecting and encompassing all people, things and places.
  
  

• The presence of Many Treasures and his ceaseless act of verifying the truth of the Lotus Sutra represents the concept that when one lives in accord with the supremely humanistic teaching of the Lotus Sutra, ones deepest desires manifest (i.e. one's prayers are answered), thereby proving the truth of the teaching or philosophy upon which one's life is based. In Nichiren Buddhism, this concept is known  as the “fusion of wisdom and reality.”  On the deepest level, Many Treasure's appearance represents the fulfillment of the ultimate desire--the desire to attain enlightenment, the supreme awakening to one's own eternal, inherent Buddha identity and that of all others.

When Abutsu-bo, an elderly male follower of Nichiren's, inquired about the meaning of the Treasure Tower in the Lotus Sutra, Nichiren replied: "Abutsu-bo is therefore the Treasure Tower itself, and the Treasure Tower is Abutsu-bo himself. No other knowledge is purposeful" (WND, p. 299 "On the Treasure Tower").

The Gohonzon: A Graphic Depiction of the Ceremony in the Air
The Gohonzon is a white paper scroll with deep black Chinese, Japanese and Sanskrit lettering on it. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo appears down its center in bold ink strokes. As the central element of the Gohonzon, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo represents the Buddha dwelling within the Treasure Tower, and thereby the Buddha nature inherent in all life and things. 

Nichiren awoke to the Buddha nature, or the universal Law, within his own life and was the first and only person on earth to propagate a simple, yet profound, practice—chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo—and an environmental stimulus—the Gohonzon—to enable everyone to achieve the same supreme awakening he achieved. Nichiren wrote of his and his disciples’ unparalleled place in Buddhist history, saying, “Nichiren alone took the lead in carrying out the task of the Bodhisattvas of the Earth…If you are of the same mind as Nichiren, you must be a Bodhisattva of the Earth...At first only Nichiren chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, but then two, three, and a hundred followed, chanting and teaching others. Propagation will unfold this way in the future as well." (WND, p. 385 "The True Aspect of All Phenomena").  

[Aside: Under the leadership of its third president, Daisaku Ikeda, the SGI is fulfilling Nichiren's  prediction in the above passage regarding the process by which Nam-myoho-renge-kyo will spread. The SGI has accomplished the unprecedented feat of widely disseminating Buddhist philosophy and practice to people of diverse backgrounds and educational, social, and income levels, in over 190 countries and territories.]  

Of the uniqueness of the Gohonzon, which he established, Nichiren wrote: “This Gohonzon shall be called the great mandala never before known; it did not appear until more than 2,220 years after the Buddha's passing” (WND, p. 832, “The Real Aspect of the Gohonzon”).   NEXT